.

 Accept The Things You Cannot Change

I know it may be difficult to except the things you cannot change, but what happened is in the past. It is over. It is yesterday. We cannot get the past back and "redo" it, like hitting the 'undo icon' when typing on the computer. We can control what happens from this day forward, what we do in the present moment. Before the pandemic, we were able to have control over what we did. The pandemic put a stop to our routines as we know them. We cannot control or change it. But we can control how we react to the situation we find ourselves in. I know it is frustrating to wait. It causes us to have anxiety and stress. For our own health and mental state we have to accept what is. The current situation is not something that we wanted or asked for, but now that it is here we have to find a way to deal with it. There are different activities we can get involved in to take our minds off of the stress we feel, while we wait for things to return to normal (or "new" normal):

• Cleaning
• Cooking
• Exploring A Hobby
• Organizing Computer Files (USB Drive)
• Reading
• Starting A Long-Awaited Project
• Talking To Friends
• Volunteering
• Writing 

      Once we find a way in our lives to handle the uncontrollable situation, we will be better off. 

  This reminds me of a prayer I learned as a child called the Serenity Prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

      A person who refuses to accept what cannot be changed, will only make themselves unhappy and bitter in the long run. This is not healthy. The attempts to change the past will create so much negativity and stress, no one will want to be around the person. So letting go of circumstances we have no control over, is a tremendous way to relieve angst. The thing that went wrong can be chalked up to a mistake which should be recognized and corrected. Once the mistake is rectified, then the learning and healing process can begin. This brings me to another quote I learned in school by George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." So if we do not learn from the past and remember what occurred, then we will go through the same anxiety-filled experience again.

We can make our lives as wonderful and as stressfree as we want. But we have to make a choice to go in a positive direction. It starts with letting go of what we cannot change, move out of the past into a bright, unifying optimistic future.